The Day Care Ritual Abuse Moral PanicIn the United States during the early 1980s, hundreds of day care providers were accused of sexually abusing their young charges in satanic rituals that included blood drinking, cannibalism, and human sacrifice. The panic surrounding the ritual abuse of children has spread quickly to Canada, Europe, and Australasia, and its rapid dispersion has been unimpeded by international investigations that found no evidence to corroborate the allegations and warned that a moral panic was thrusting them into professional public attention. This work is a sociologically based analysis of the day care ritual abuse panic in America. It introduces the concept of moral panic and analyzes its relevance to the ritual abuse scare, explores the ideological, political, economic, and professional forces that fomented the panic, discusses the McMartin Preschool case as the incident that brought attention to satanic menaces and children, and examines the dialect between the various interest groups that stirred up and spread the moral panic and the day care providers accused of ritual abuse. Also covered are the popular culture representations of day care ritual abuse, the diffusion of the scare to areas overseas, the institutionally symbolic and ideologically contradictory social ends of the panic, and the outcomes of the panic in various settings. The book ends with a discussion of moral panic theory and how it needs to be changed for a complex, multi-mediated postmodern culture, and what lessons can be learned from the scare. |
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This author quotes secondary sources without fact-checking. I would not recommend this book.
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An excellent, after the fact summary of the satanic ritual abuse moral panic from a sociological perspective. Well-referenced, well-researched, comprehensive, and published by an excellent publisher with a very good reputation. One in a series of books sealing the case that there was nothing to allegations of satanic ritual abuse except a bunch of religious fundamentalists with millennial fin-de-siecle concerns, a whole bunch of poorly-trained social workers and lots of psychotherapists perfectly willing to spend days, sometimes months, forcing a child to confess to events that never happened. Highly recommended.
Contents
Open Court v Shielded Testimony of Children in the Criminal Trials of 26 Providers | 127 |
Verdicts and Sentences in Day Care Ritual Abuse Trials | 152 |
Appeal Decisions in Day Care Ritual Abuse Trials | 155 |
The Devil Goes Abroad | 166 |
Sample of European and Australasian Ritual Abuse Cases | 174 |
Examples of Public Inquiries into International Ritual Abuse Cases | 179 |
When All Is Said and Done | 192 |
Brief Summary of Three Ritual Abuse Laws | 214 |
| 76 | |
Morality Plays | 115 |
Legal Dispositions of 19 Untried Providers | 116 |
Predictions of Testimonial Abilities vs Actual Performance of Child Witnesses on CrossExamination in State v Akiki | 123 |
Notes | 229 |
Index | 261 |
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Common terms and phrases
abuse moral panic accused acts adults allegations American appeared attorney began believe Buckey called care ritual abuse charges child child abuse child-savers claimed considered convicted Country court cult cultural day care center day care ritual decade defense described devil discourse dismissed evidence evil example expert fact fear Fells forced going guilty innocence interest interviews involved judge Kelly kind linked master symbols McMartin Preschool memories Michaels mother narrative never offers officers once organization parents person police problems professional prosecutor protect providers psychological question remember reveals ritual abuse moral role satanic satanists sexual abuse social workers society stand story symptoms talk television tell term testified testimony things threat tion told took trauma trial truth turn United victims witness young
Popular passages
Page 2 - Societies appear to be subject, every now and then, to periods of moral panic. A condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests...
Page 2 - A condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests; its nature is presented in a stylized and stereotypical fashion by the mass media; the moral barricades are manned by editors, bishops, politicians and other right-thinking people; socially accredited experts pronounce their diagnoses and solutions; ways of coping are evolved or (more often) resorted to; the condition then disappears, submerges or deteriorates and becomes more...
Page 109 - Social capital is the aggregate of the actual or potential resources which are linked to possession of a durable network of more or less institutionalized relationships of mutual acquaintance and recognition...
Page 2 - Sometimes the subject of the panic is quite novel and at other times it is something which has been in existence long enough, but suddenly appears in the limelight. Sometimes the panic passes over and is forgotten, except in folklore and collective memory; at other times it has more serious and long-lasting repercussions and might produce such changes as those in legal and social policy or even in the way society conceives itself.
Page 101 - We propose to define ritualistic abuse as abuse that occurs in a context linked to some symbols or group activity that have a religious, magical, or supernatural connotation, and where the invocation of these symbols or activities, repeated over time, is used to frighten and intimidate the children.
Page 122 - if the State makes an adequate showing of necessity, the state interest in protecting child witnesses from the trauma of testifying in a child abuse case is sufficiently important to justify the use of a special procedure that permits a child witness in such cases to testify at trial against a defendant in the absence of face-to-face confrontation with the defendant
Page 106 - He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.
Page 27 - Please question your child to see if he or she has been a witness to any crime or if he or she has been a victim. Our investigation indicates that possible criminal acts include: oral sex, fondling of genitals, buttock or chest area, and sodomy, possibly committed under the pretense of "taking the child's temperature.
Page 121 - While no one would think of calling as a witness an infant only two or three years old, there is no precise age which determines the question of competency. This depends on the capacity and intelligence of the child, his appreciation of the difference between truth and falsehood, as well as of his duty to tell the former.
Page 2 - ... manned by editors, bishops, politicians and other right-thinking people; socially accredited experts pronounce their diagnoses and solutions; ways of coping are evolved (or more often) resorted to; the condition then disappears, submerges or deteriorates and becomes more visible. Sometimes the subject of the panic is quite novel and at other times it is something which has been in existence long enough, but suddenly appears in the limelight.
References to this book
Bibliographic information
| Title | The Day Care Ritual Abuse Moral Panic |
| Author | Mary de Young |
| Publisher | McFarland, 2003 |
| ISBN | 0786426896, 9780786426898 |
| Length | 280 pages |
| Subjects | › Education / General |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |